Dual Platform Radeon 9600
August 20, 2005
In a surprising move, ATI has released a $199 Radeon 9600 Pro card which works on both PCs and Macs. This is a smart move for ATI, even if it does involve a significant bit of engineering cost and effort. Now they can distribute one card for both systems, which have a long history of using different cards, with Mac versions being hideously overpriced. In the end, consumers will benefit from every angle, by being able to purchase the card in stores, as well as saving some money.
For the price, the card is quite nice, too. Personally, I would never spend over $200 on an upgrade video card for any system, and ATI just barely hit that mark. The AGP 2.0 card features 4X and 8X compatibility, 256 MB of DDR RAM, as well as the dual-link capability (to drive the high-end 30” Apple displays). Finally, an affordable Mac video card exists which doesn’t skimp on performance…or TV output! [via]